Traditional scanning of fingerprint cards requires great amounts of time and labor. The typical fingerprint card will contain both fingerprint images and biographic data (name, date, place of birth . . . etc.). The biographic data located on the fingerprint card could be either typed or hand written and could also be written in multiple languages. An operator must visually read the biographic data from the fingerprint card biographic data locations and input the data into an electronic fingerprint file associated with the card. Next, the operator would scan the fingerprint card on a flatbed scanner generating an image of the fingerprint card. Finally the fingerprints on the fingerprint card image would be separated and the individual fingerprints written to the electronic fingerprint file thereby completing the process. Typically, an approved FBI scanner is used for scanning the cards, and the electronic fingerprint file format conforms to the Electronic Biometric Transmission Specification (EBTS). For the EBTS specification, see document IAFIS-DOC-01078-9.4, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Criminal Justice Information Services Division, 1000 Custer Hollow Road, Clarksburg, W. Va. 26306, U.S.A. Traditional biographical data entry and scanning must be done one card at a time, and each card takes around 10 to 15 minutes to process. It would thus be desirable to avoid the time consuming laborious tasks of biographical data entry and scanning so as to facilitate the creation of electronic searchable files.